Discuss the Conflict That Is Occurring at General Hospital

Discuss the conflict that is occurring at General Hospital.

The conflict occurring at General Hospital stems from cost control, specifically physician driven costs and General Hospital not being able to compete with the medical center because they have state-of-the-art equipment. The hospital needed to increase revenue and cut cost so that new services could be offered and then they would be able to compete with the medical center. If the hospital is unable to do this the hospital could close or lose its accreditation. It has been hard for Mike Hammer to control physician driven cost in the past, he tried to different times using different approaches and was unsuccessful both times. Hammer now believes that physician driven costs had to be tackled immediately but in steps and with one doctor at a time. Hammer thinks if he can get new cost efficient procedures implemented it would start to change the culture of the hospital and make everyone more aware of their spending and becoming more efficient and then he would be able to make more ambitious attempts at cost management at the hospital. It was the perfect time for Hammer to take a stab at cost management because he had recently hired Marge Harding, the new hospital administrator and hospitals chief operating officer. Hammer and Harding had a meeting and Hammer told Harding that they had to be aggressive about costs and that she needed to find one thing the doctors do that can be done cheaper and put a new process into place immediately. The change Harding made was how the EKG readings where interpreted, prior to this change all the EKG readings for the last fifteen years where interpreted by Dr. James Boyer, now it was going to be computerized. Marge Harding fired Dr. Boyer and implemented the computerized interpretations, by her calculations she had saved the hospital one hundred thousand dollars a year for the next three years at least. When Marge Harding implemented the new computerized system she went on vacation and the doctors had to deal with all the problems that came with her new “effective” process. The computerized EKG readings where suppose to come back immediately and correctly but they weren’t it would take hours sometimes and then it may have the wrong name on the results which caused misdiagnosis for patients and even readings for patients that were not at that hospital it was more of a headache and hassle than an a effective cost saving solution. The doctors where angry because they didn’t know Dr. Boyer was terminated and the computerized system was not working out well and wanted to have a meeting with Harding but she declined. Harding sent a message stating they needed to just get through this because the computerized system was there to stay so the doctors sent a message back that if she didn’t meet them they would send all new patients to other hospitals. The Doctors tried speaking with Mike Hammer but he did not want